Apple to out-ship HP in 2012, say pundits
In mobile computers, at least
Apple will next year out-ship HP - if only when it comes to mobile computers - it has been forecast.
The catch, you'll have already guessed, is that media tablet sales have to be included in the total.
Unnamed pundits cited by DigiTimes say Apple could ship 15m MacBooks in 2012. And on a forecast 60m iPads - 75 per cent of the 80m total - and that's Apple mobile shipments of 75m units.
That's a significant figure, but HP, having shipped 40m notebooks in 2010 is expected to ship 45-50m this year, according to the same sources, growth of 12.5 per cent minimum. Even with modest year-on-year growth there - plus sales of the just-launched TouchPad tablet - it's going to be a close-run race.
A consistent year-on-year increase of 12.5 per cent would have HP shipping just over 50m notebooks in 2012. It then needs only tell 15m tablets - 19 per cent of the anticipated market - to beat Apple.
In Q1 2011. According to market watcher Canalys, Apple shipped just under 8.5m iPads and Macs, both portable and desktop. HP shipped almost 14.7m netbooks, notebooks and desktop PCs.
Q2 numbers won't be in for several weeks, but it's hard to imagine that Apple won't increase its market share - up from 9.5 per cent in Q1 - even if it doesn't push past Dell, Acer or HP.
As for Q3, Apple is said to be anticipating shipments of 12-14m iPad 2, having worked its supply chain well in Q2 to ensure it has enough parts to produce sufficient pads for the new quarter.
If Apple does indeed plan to announce the iPad 3 in September, possibly with a view to commencing shipments in October, it will want to maximise iPad 2 sales ahead of the launch. And that is what appears to be happening. ®
COMMENTS
The Catch ?
So innovating in a new mass market product category and successfully outselling all and sundry is a catch now is it? So if you successfully redefine the market taking customer's away from the traditional notebook segment, that's a catch ? Saying there is a catch makes it sound like there is something sneaky going on to fluff up the figures when the truth is much more spectacular - long established traditional markets are being turned on their heads. Sheesh Reg, when are you ever going to say the straight out obvious - that Apple have done a good job? It doesn't hurt to provide a bit of acknowledgement every now and then. It doesn't mean you've gone all soft and lost all critical faculties. It actually means you will be trusted more to tell it how it is.
Many of our American friends probably think you have bad judgement when in fact The Register, along with journals like Private Eye is in a long tradition of English cynicism applied uniformly to everything - which has it's place. A good bit of cynical reporting provides a useful balance to corporate marketing spin. The problem is if you are not careful, cynicism becomes the lens through which everything is seen (very bad) and also dampens innovation. So I'm not surprised you are falling so far behind Tech Crunch for video and and editorial variety. Do you really want to be no more than a bunch of undifferentiated mini-Hislops ?
Only
>>> HP ... needs only tell 15m tablets
They better start selling paracetamol then...
Statistical shuffling
Hang on, HP sells 50m notebooks and Apple sells 15m, and Apple sells more? Come off it! One's a proper computing device, and the other is a consumer media device!
In the consumer sector it is a slightly different picture
One is a F***Book access device and the other one is surprise, surprise a F***Book access device.
So putting them in one category is not that far off.
Consumer media devices
"Come off it! One's a proper computing device, and the other is a consumer media device!"
And just what, pray tell, do you think many laptops are used for?
Granted that more than 15 million of these HP laptops are probably going to be mid-to-high end machines with heavier use than that, but still - a fair number of those 50 million won't. One of the reasons the iPad is so successful is that it really does allows a lot of the "user class" to do everything they need.
-d
